CLEVELAND — The City of Cleveland has again pushed the reset button for its on-again, off-again new headquarters project for the Division of Police. The decision to issue a new request for proposals for the CPD HQ project was fueled by concerns over the dramatically different real estate market and the impact of inflation on the cost of building materials, city officials said. However, by temporarily delaying the project yet again, Cleveland taxpayers will have to foot the bill for another extension of the city’s lease for the current police headquarters at the Justice Center — a property that the city once owned outright.
Earlier this week, city officials announced that they had issued another request for proposals — or RFP — for the new police headquarters. The RFP came nearly a year after former Mayor Frank Jackson and other city officials ceremonially broke ground on the project, which was to be located near East 75th Street and Opportunity Corridor. Although city officials said the Opportunity Corridor site is still a viable option, it doesn’t appear to meet the city’s criteria for a new site, specifically its proximity to City Hall.
According to the request for proposals, the city is searching for a 250,000-square-foot building with 450 secure parking spaces and room for another 50 public parking spaces. The 57-page document also specifies the city is looking for a location within a 2.5-mile radius of city hall.
The Opportunity Corridor site is roughly four miles away from City Hall.
“We thought it would be in the best interest of the residents and the city to ensure that we’re looking at all options,” said Bonnie Teeuwen, the chief operating officer for the City of Cleveland. “[The Opportunity Corridor site] has not been ruled out. It’s still being considered. We just want a verification of what the best site may be.”
Teeuwen said when city leaders began honing in on the Opportunity Corridor site in 2020 and early 2021, inflation and supply chain constraints had yet to become as big of a concern as it is today. Additionally, constructing the new headquarters from scratch would likely take longer than retrofitting an existing, appropriate structure.
Although the City Council signed off on the Opportunity Corridor site last year, many members did so begrudgingly, officials said.
“At the end of the day, I think most members felt that putting the police headquarters on Opportunity Corridor was not the best site. What we were told at the time was that there were no other sites available,” said Councilman and Safety Committee Chairman Mike Polensek (Ward 8). “If they believe they can find a better site and a better building if they are going to retrofit existing building at a reduced cost rather than go to Opportunity Corridor, I’m willing to listen as chairman of public safety. I’m willing to sit down and hear what they have to say but at the end of the day they have to get going.”
The boondoggle that the police headquarters has become goes back to 2018 when the city agreed to a deal with Cuyahoga County to sell its portion of the Justice Center for $9.2 million. At the time, city officials were moving forward with acquiring the former Plain Dealer building located at 1801 Superior, a fairly modern building that met or exceeded the city’s criteria for a new headquarters.
While construction was expected to get underway, the city opted to lease back from the county it’s portion of the Justice Center for more than $1.5 million from Oct. 2018 through Oct. 2019. As part of the lease agreement, the city could exercise two, one-year extensions through 2021 while the former Plain Dealer building was renovated and retrofitted. However, a few months after the current police headquarters at the Justice Center was sold and leased back by the county, city officials announced that they had reached an impasse in acquiring the Plain Dealer building.
In late 2018, city officials acknowledged that the city’s plans of acquiring the property were officially dead, culminating in a bitter end to a year’s worth of negotiations and planning. Although the city never publicly acknowledged the reason for the impasse, sources said at the time that the deal was derailed by two existing tenants that had long-term leases at the property.
It was back to square one.
The city exercised its lease extensions, which cost the taxpayers more than $1.7 million in 2019 and $1.9 million in 2020. Then, in October 2021, the city agreed to another lease extension with the county to the tune of $2.1 million.
At a Safety Committee hearing in October 2021, city council members were flummoxed by the reality that the taxpayers would continue to have to pay to rent a space that — up until recently — the city owned.
“With more than $2 million looming over our heads in just rent, I think we as a council and the city as a whole need to start making this a higher priority,” said Ward 16 Councilman Brian Kazy in October 2021. “I think it’s more than just a sense of urgency because come Oct. 2, 2022, technically we could be homeless, right? We could be out of the Justice Center. [The county] could lock us out if we don’t renew a new lease.”
As he did back then, Polensek shares those same concerns now.
“This has been going on for years but there comes a point of how much longer are we going to be in a rental situation at the Justice Center with the county?” Polensek said. “We need to have better facilities for our men and women in blue. It’s outrageous, outrageous really. Just talk about bad planning. What else can you say? It’s bad planning.”
Although the city’s newly-issued RFP will likely play a major role in whether the city moves forward with the Opportunity Corridor site, the new set of criteria potentially brings the former Plain Dealer building back into the fold. Sources have told News 5 that the roadblocks that existed in 2018 are no longer a concern.
Additionally, the cost savings associated with renovating an existing building may make the lease extensions a moot point.
“If we are using a building that already exists and it’s not ground-up construction, there are opportunities for time savings as well as cost savings,” Teeuwen said. “We’re interested in cost and time. The emphasis is there are new opportunities from when they originally made the decision because of the real estate market in Cleveland and the cost [of construction].”
Although the construction timeline for the new police headquarters would largely depend on the size and scope of the project — and whether the building would be constructed from scratch or an existing building would be renovated — it is likely that the city will have to extend its lease of the Justice Center for an additional two, one-year terms. Those extensions, according to legislation introduced last month, would cost at minimum $2.1 million each year. By the end of the second extension, which would expire in October 2024, the city will have spent, at a minimum, $11.4 million in renting the Justice Center, roughly $2.2 million more than it sold it to the county for.
“I have great concerns about it,” Polensek said.
